Jeff Ma – Making Decisions with Data - [Invest Like the Best, EP.151]

My guest this week is Jeff Ma. Jeff was on the famous MIT Blackjack team from the book Bringing Down the House but has spent his career in an around fields of analytics and data science. He’s studied sports betting and analytics, built companies for analyzing human capital, and ran the data science and analytics group at Twitter. Here are links to his book, blog, and podcast. Our discussion is about a number of fascinating ways data is being used to make decisions in the worlds of sports and business. Please enjoy! For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag Show Notes 1:20 - (First Question) – How quantitative analytics have evolved in sports and how they’re being used 4:26 – Best role of humans in the analysis process 8:38 – Sports that are most interesting to observe through analytics 10:26 – How does luck play into sports analysis 11:54 – Team analytics vs better analytics 12:38 – Concentration of success among sports betters and their moats 14:58 – Favorite lessons learned from professional gamblers 16:45 – How analytics got introduced into gambling 19:21 – Understanding one’s own biases 24:04 – How he became VP of analytics at Twitter 28:37 – Primary lessons from the work evaluating human capital and talent with analytics 28:59 – Niel Roberson Podcast Episode 31:40 – How to model people for success when hiring 33:29 – How to hire the right data scientists’ team 37:54 – Most interesting problems they tackled at twitter 42:31 – Responsibility of social platforms to police itself 45:34 – Areas that would interest him in the future as an investor 49:24 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Jeff 51:50 – Values instilled in him by his parents. Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag